ABSTRACT

Encode::Encoder allows you to use Encode in an object-
oriented style. This is not only more intuitive than a
functional approach, but also handier when you want to stack
encodings. Suppose you want your UTF-8 string converted to
Latin1 then Base64: you can simply say
my $base64 = encoder($utf8)->latin1->base64;
instead of
my $latin1 = encode("latin1", $utf8);
my $base64 = encode_base64($utf8);
or the lazier and more convoluted
my $base64 = encode_base64(encode("latin1", $utf8));

Description

Here is how to use this module.
+ There are at least two instance variables stored in a
hash reference, {data} and {encoding}.
+ When there is no method, it takes the method name as the
name of the encoding and encodes the instance data with
encoding. If successful, the instance encoding is set
accordingly.
+ You can retrieve the result via ->data but usually you
don't have to because the stringify operator ("") is
overridden to do exactly that.
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Predefined Methods
This module predefines the methods below:
$e = Encode::Encoder->new([$data, $encoding]);
returns an encoder object. Its data is initialized with
$data if present, and its encoding is set to $encoding
if present.
When $encoding is omitted, it defaults to utf8 if $data
is already in utf8 or "" (empty string) otherwise.
encoder()
is an alias of Encode::Encoder->new(). This one is
exported on demand.
$e->data([$data])
When $data is present, sets the instance data to $data
and returns the object itself. Otherwise, the current
instance data is returned.
$e->encoding([$encoding])
When $encoding is present, sets the instance encoding to
$encoding and returns the object itself. Otherwise, the
current instance encoding is returned.
$e->bytes([$encoding])
decodes instance data from $encoding, or the instance
encoding if omitted. If the conversion is successful,
the instance encoding will be set to "".
The name bytes was deliberately picked to avoid
namespace tainting -- this module may be used as a base
class so method names that appear in Encode::Encoding
are avoided.
Example: base64 transcoder
This module is designed to work with Encode::Encoding. To
make the Base64 transcoder example above really work, you
could write a module like this:
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package Encode::Base64;
use base 'Encode::Encoding';
__PACKAGE__->Define('base64');
use MIME::Base64;
sub encode{
my ($obj, $data) = @_;
return encode_base64($data);
}
sub decode{
my ($obj, $data) = @_;
return decode_base64($data);
}
1;
__END__
And your caller module would be something like this:
use Encode::Encoder;
use Encode::Base64;
# now you can really do the following
encoder($data)->iso_8859_1->base64;
encoder($base64)->bytes('base64')->latin1;
Operator Overloading
This module overloads two operators, stringify ("") and num-
ify (0+).
Stringify dumps the data inside the object.
Numify returns the number of bytes in the instance data.
They come in handy when you want to print or find the size
of data.